What do you think about porting the Wolfenstein 3D or DOOM to Neo-Geo? - Page 1

As it known, Wolfenstein and Doom (especially Doom) already has been ported to the all possible platforms practically since its first appearance on the PCs, however, unfortunately, there is not the Neo-Geo in the list of these platforms, Wolf- and Doom-porters doesn`t pay any attention to this system absolutely undeservedly.
And now I think - is it generally possible to port these 2 games to Neo-Geo, is this machine able to cope with them? If it`s possible to port these games, then what`s about to do it nevertheless?

The system can't do software rendering, that's why you don't see thoses types of games.
You would need to build a special cartidge with a writable graphics space to achieve this.

There is no way to to any type of rasters?

The Neo-Geo is purely tile-based. On the Neo-Geo CD you could create tile graphics dynamically, but on the Neo Geo AES/MVS the graphics are fetched from a separate ROM in the cartridge (like the NES).

Ok for the tiles, but raycasting can be done with rasters (i.e. without the need of a framebuffer) but this is a really difficult task as cycle counting (if the hardware can't provide a int per line) have to be done

Well, there's that:
https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Timer_interrupt

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So making a basic raycasting (no texture) should be possible

Zerosquare (./4) :
The Neo-Geo is purely tile-based. On the Neo-Geo CD you could create tile graphics dynamically, but on the Neo Geo AES/MVS the graphics are fetched from a separate ROM in the cartridge (like the NES).

Then, how managed the creators of these games to port it to the SNES (Wolf and Doom) and Sega 32X (only Doom), which are using an exclusively tile graphics too?

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About the special chip - I hear a modern manufacturers of cartridges for retro-consoles (mainly for a various clones of NES/Famicom & Genesis/Megadrive) replaces a mappers, which has been used in a cartridges in the past, with a programmable-logic devices.
I`m interested, will such trick work with Neo-Geo?

Godzil (./12) :
furrtek a été invité sur ce sujet.

Actually, not users here knows the French.

I'm just calling Furrtek on this thread, this message is an automatic from the forum software

VasiliyFamiliya (./13) :

Godzil (./12) :
furrtek a été invité sur ce sujet.

Actually, not users here knows the French.

Your are in a french Forum and a lot of people here are french
Merci de respecter les Forums Français qui concèdent d'écrire en anglais...

One huge issue is your final image has to fit a plane of 16*16 tiles, with 15 colors per tile.
You could overlay 4 of thoses planes on the hardware.

And everything has to fit 256 palettes, keeping in mind you can't change all of thoses in a single vblank.

Good luck with the algorythm

As HPMAN wrote, even if you have a whole computer doing the math and rendering inside the cartridge, you still have to give tiles in 4bpp and palettes to the NeoGeo.
The system just grabs fistfulls of pixels from the cart and throws them in line buffers at the right position. You can't do much in between that from the CPU...

You could go even more crazy by feeding the NeoGeo pixel by pixel, by syncing to the reset and pixel clock signals for example (166ns between pixels)
But then what's the point of using a NeoGeo just for its joypad ports and the TV output ?

Well, it`s mean that it`s won`t come in to port these games?

O_o (./7) :
doom on a 12mhz cpu ... well, forget it
maybe wolfenstein with agressive optimisations (like on megadrive) but only possible on neogeo cd

There's a version of Doom on the ZX Spectrum - uses a 3.5mhz Z80 as its CPU (Basically a slower version of the Neo Geo's sound processor)

I wonder if Doom may be possible on Neo Geo by using a large number of pre-stored pixel sequences (perhaps using less colours). Or maybe even a combination of this technique and mid-line and hsync raster changes.

However I think the Neo Geo's greatest asset is its huge cart capacity so maybe pre-rotated wall blocks and floor pieces can be stored and then scaled by the hardware? This would surely be the fastest way of doing things.

Anyone know how Duke Nukem 3D was made on the Megadrive? Maybe that can offer some clues. As far as I know the cart is just a standard cart - no extra chips. It seems unlikely everything is calculated in realtime since it runs pretty fast. I could be wrong but I don't remember the standard Amiga running anything texture-mapped that fast and that has a blitter.

CosmicR (./19) :

There's a version of Doom on the ZX Spectrum - uses a 3.5mhz Z80 as its CPU (Basically a slower version of the Neo Geo's sound processor)...

I can say even more - there is a version of Doom for the Commodore VIC-20 (proof is in this video since 18:06 moment).

However I think the Neo Geo's greatest asset is its huge cart capacity so maybe pre-rotated wall blocks and floor pieces...

Pre-rotated? Wait a minute, does Neo-Geo really can`t to rotate sprites at real time?

VasiliyFamiliya (./20) :
Wait a minute, does Neo-Geo really can`t to rotate sprites at real time?

No. It can't even zoom sprites, only shrink them down.

Zerosquare (./21) :
Wait a minute, does Neo-Geo really can`t to rotate sprites at real time?

No. It can't even zoom sprites, only shrink them down.[/quote]

Oh, noooooo! #facepalm#

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O_o (./23) :

CosmicR (./19) :

O_o (./7) :
doom on a 12mhz cpu ... well, forget it
maybe wolfenstein with agressive optimisations (like on megadrive) but only possible on neogeo cd

There's a version of Doom on the ZX Spectrum - uses a 3.5mhz Z80 as its CPU (Basically a slower version of the Neo Geo's sound processor)

This is NOT a Doom port, this is a remake or demake with extremely degraded graphics and 3D capabilities
it was remade from scratch with ZX spectrum limitation in mind, it's not a straight port of the original source code

Like official Doom/Wolf3D on the SNES/Megadrive and other platform, most of them don't use the original PC code, and for some use the original asset, lots don't.

O_o (./23) :

CosmicR (./19) :

O_o (./7) :
doom on a 12mhz cpu ... well, forget it
maybe wolfenstein with agressive optimisations (like on megadrive) but only possible on neogeo cd

There's a version of Doom on the ZX Spectrum - uses a 3.5mhz Z80 as its CPU (Basically a slower version of the Neo Geo's sound processor)

This is NOT a Doom port, this is a remake or demake with extremely degraded graphics and 3D capabilities
it was remade from scratch with ZX spectrum limitation in mind, it's not a straight port of the original source code

I assumed the OP meant a version (rather than a direct port of source code) of Doom for the Neo Geo, like you had on the SNES, 32X or Jaguar, Playstation etc. Many of those suffered from compromises. E.g. no floors in SNES version, reduced window sizes, missing levels etc. The ZX Spectrum version of Doom is very impressive considering the limited hardware. If someone can do similar for the Neo Geo we would have a version of Doom to be proud of.

VasiliyFamiliya (./22) :

Zerosquare (./21) :
Wait a minute, does Neo-Geo really can`t to rotate sprites at real time?

No. It can't even zoom sprites, only shrink them down.[/quote]

Oh, noooooo! #facepalm#

Although 'Sprite Shrinking' is better because the image doesn't go blocky when you 'enlarge' it. Imagine how blocky the Art of Fighting games would look with sprite zooming. Instead you have perfect detail.

Hardware rotation of sprites would have been useful though

the neogeo sucks

You can play "Doom" on a thermostat because of course you can https://t.co/tql3kdXQpX pic.twitter.com/P2Ob7fy1xD

— Motherboard (@motherboard) May 23, 2017

Better! On eInk readers:

Meanwhile, a one more version of Wolfenstein 3D has appeared - at this time for Commodore 64/128 (but truly, with SuperCPU v2 and 16MB RAM), based on official sources.
Analogous version of Doom appeared even earlier.
Because of this it`s even more sad that it`s not result to port for Neo-Geo.

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O_o (./29) :
why don't you start porting it ?

I just need a specialist who can adaptate original sources to the NG platform features. And at the same time to bring some changes to game play, to make this games more suitable for arcade game format (I`ll tell more details about this changes lates).